In a post that is being put up at the company's website and shared with The Hollywood Reporter, BitTorrent calls it a "fabrication" that piracy exists for BitTorrent, best known for facilitating file-sharing.

"We don’t host infringing content," the company says. "We don’t point to it. It’s literally impossible to 'illegally download something on BitTorrent.' To pirate stuff, you need more than a protocol. You need search, a pirate content site, and a content manager. We offer none of those things. If you’re using BitTorrent for piracy, you’re doing it wrong."

Much of the reports about "most pirated" shows traces back to TorrentFreak, which has cited traffic trends on BitTorrent.

Now, BitTorrent is lashing back.

"These so-called 'records' are presumably based on numbers from pirate websites that have no affiliation with BitTorrent, Inc.," says the company. "If they’re corroborated using data from pirate websites, they’re Internet Piracy Records. They’re not BitTorrent Piracy Records."

The company, which uses open-source protocol, is stepping up its efforts to protect its image as it seeks new partnerships in Hollywood. Recently, the company made a deal with Cinedigm over the Emily Blunt/Colin Firth indie Arthur Newman, but has been hampered by perception of the company.

"We don’t endorse piracy. We don’t tally up illegal downloads, and crown pirate-kings. But these kinds of stories give us the opportunity to tell the truth about what’s going on inside BitTorrent.

In partnership with the Internet Archive, artists, labels and studios, we’ve made more than two million pieces of licensed, legal content available for download over the BitTorrent protocol. We’ve built a legit media ecosystem designed to close the gap between creators and fans. In 2012 alone, titles from this collection have been downloaded over 152 million times."

The company also checks its internal data and says that Game of Thrones isn't its king. Instead, BitTorrent says that a show called Epic Meal Time has garnered 8,626,987 downloads. "That’s nearly double the claimed downloads of the Game of Thrones finale," it says.

BitTorrent concludes its post by encouraging readers to watch Game of Thrones -- "legally."